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Facets of Understanding
Key Questions
Facet 1: Explanation
Students can provide sophisticated and apt explanations and theories, which provide knowledgeable and justified accounts of events, actions, and ideas.
  • Why is that so?
  • How can that be explained?
  • How can that be proven?
  • To what is this connected?
  • How does it work?
  • What is implied?
Facet 2: Interpretation
Students create meaning in what they learn.
  • What does it mean?
  • Why does it matter?
  • What of it?
  • What does it illustrate or illuminate in human experience?
  • How does it relate to me?
  • What makes sense?
Facet 3: Application
Students gain the ability to use knowledge effectively in new situations and diverse contexts.
  • How and where can we use this knowledge, skill, or process?
  • How should my thinking and action be modified to meet the demands of this particular situation?
Facet 4: Perspective
Students can see critical and insightful points of view.
  • From whose point of view?
  • From which vantage point?
  • What is assumed or tacit that needs to be made explicit and considered?
  • What is justified or warranted?
  • Is there adequate evidence?
  • Is it reasonable?
  • What are the strengths or weaknesses of the idea?
  • Is it plausible?
  • What are its limits? So what?
Facet 5: Empathy
Students have the ability to get inside another person's feelings and worldview.
  • How does it seem to you?
  • What do they see that I don't?
  • What do I need to experience if I am to understand?
  • What was the artist or performer feeling, seeing, and trying to make me feel and see?
Facet 6: Self-Knowledge
Self-knowledge includes the wisdom to know one's ignorance and how one's patterns of thought and action inform as well as prejudice understanding.
  • How does who I am shape my views?
  • What are the limits of my understanding?
  • What are my blind spots?
  • What am I prone to misunderstand because of prejudice, habit, or style?